Former Sen. Rick Santorum pointed the finger at broken homes and fatherless young males as a major contributor to mass shootings when asked to weigh in on the gun-control debate on CNN.

“Gun control is a debate that we need to have,” Mr. Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican and CNN political commentator who boasts an A+ rating with the National Rifle Association, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. The former senator reiterated his call to focus on the family during an appearance Monday on CNN’s “New Day.”

“But another debate we need to have is something that’s also common in these shootings, the fact that these kids come from broken homes without dads. That is not something we’re talking about, and that is the commonality,” he said. “We want to talk about things we can work together on? How about working together to try to see what we can do to get more dads involved in the lives of their kids.”

He added that “75 percent of these school shooters since Columbine did not have dads in the home. This is a serious issue and we’re not talking about it.”

Mr. Santorum said he wasn’t placing the blame solely on fatherless homes, but that it should at least be discussed along with mental health issues, “violent culture,” including video games and movies, strengthening school security, and strengthening background checks.

“You go into the incarceration rates of young men in prison and you look at how many of them do not have fathers in the home, again 75-80 percent,” Mr. Santorum said. “This is a serious problem in America and we continue to whistle through the graveyard and ignore it, and I think that’s a mistake.”